Profe in the DR 38

Profe in the DR 38

5-15-12

It is a campaign year and that means the local and national governments doing a lot of last minute construction projects to win votes.  (They do nothing for 3 ½ years, then try to do everything in the months before the election.)  Here in the batey they began to work on our streets. Talk was of sidewalks and asphalt.  They put in cement curbs, no digging, simply pouring the “L” shaped cement about a foot above the current level of the street.  When they finished with the curbs they just disappeared.  Since the election is Sunday, I am guessing they are not coming back.

            The first week of May we received a fair amount of rain, slightly inundating the batey.  The curbs had been put in with little or no thought to drainage routes and as a result blocked or redirected water flows, filling up the streets, or flooding people’s houses.  With all the standing water everywhere, mosquitoes have been abundant and aggressive.

            Lately Profeta, the baseball/softball coach, has been helping me out at night when I am busy.  He has been opening the refugio so kids can read in the library or play chess in the other classroom.  The other night he opened things up and I arrived a half hour later.  As I walked in the library, there were eight kids seated at desks, all reading intently, not a single peep to be heard.  No one does anything quietly here, so to see them so engulfed in their books was wonderful.

            Last week though, Profeta did have a small incident at night at the refugio.  He was inside playing chess when he saw someone outside near the latrines “smoking drugs”.  He went out and proceeded to kick this young man out of the fenced off area that makes up the refugio.  The young man must have been smoking drugs because he started to try to fight with Profeta (who is quite big and muscular.)  People came running to see the fight like sharks to blood.  The young man grabbed a large rock to throw at Profeta.  He in response pulled out his pistol.   Now the crowd was running in the other direction.   The young man’s parents got involved; lots of yelling and screaming, and after about ten minutes, Profeta came back into the refugio like nothing happened. 

            Last Tuesday I planned to head down to Los Patos about 2 ½ hours from here to pick up some books from fellow volunteer Sam.  He had received a very large shipment of books for his library and had four boxes of doubles to pass on to me.  Jairo and I rented a small pickup, and accompanied by the pickup owner’s son, headed towards Barahona.  Jairo was stopped at the police check point for not using his seatbelt, and we quickly realized we didn’t have the registration for the truck.  The police tried to fine us several hundred pesos, but Jairo talked him down to just one hundred.  From there we went to fill the truck up with gas.  The owner had done a homemade conversion job on the truck so it could use propane.  After filling the old tank sitting in a box in the back of the pickup, we couldn’t get the truck to start again.  We tried push starting it numerous times, but it was clear the engine just wasn’t getting gas.  The owner’s sun and Jairo then played with all the valves, hoses, and anything else that might help.  (I stayed off to the side a bit so in case they blew up, someone could call an ambulance.)  The owner’s sun was using a pair of pliers to open and close the valves, and apparently too much force, because he ended up breaking off one of the valves, and we couldn’t get it open after that.  We ended up having to get a mechanic, who ran a hose off of the valve for filling up the tank, problem solved.  Meanwhile, Sam brought the books an hour and a half up the road, meeting us in Barahona.  On the way back, as we passed over a speed bump in Batey 3, we heard the transmission hit the ground.  I called the only other small truck owner in my batey, and had him come pull the truck, us and the books back to Isabela.   The trip ended up taking a lot more time and money than planned, but everyone was very excited about the new additions to the library. 

5-16-12

Today in the afternoon, in the middle of a reading class, some 40-50 cars, vans, pickups and motorcycles carrying people dressed in purple, their political party’s color, drove into the batey and started doing laps around the park, yelling, honking, and revving engines.  It was quite a show that lasted some 15 minutes.  People here take there political party quite serious.   

Profe in the DR 37

Profe in the DR 37

4-29-12

The week after Semana Santa ended up being kind of slow for me as far as teaching.  The kids all took an extra week of vacation even though they were supposed to be in school.  This happens here all the time.  I used the free time to get a bunch of work done that had been piling up. 

My mother and her husband flew in to the DR on the 17^th.   I met them at a resort in Punta Cana.  It was the first time for me to travel to the east side of the island.  The east side is flatter with very few mountains, and far more trees.  They raise cattle and sugar cane.  I noticed that they did not irrigate the sugar cane fields.  I assume that is because they have sufficient rainfall.   In several places I saw them pulling the large sugar cane carts with oxen.  The closer I got to Punta Cana the more built up for tourism it seemed to be.  As the bus passed through towns, you could see people dressed in various uniforms of cook, maids, waiters, etc., waiting for transportation to the different resorts in the area.

It was also the first time for me to stay at an all inclusive resort.  We stayed in the Barceló which was absolutely humungous.  It was one of the earlier built resorts and so had an extremely large amount of land, 2 km of ocean frontage and its own golf course.  There were tons of large 3 story buildings for guests, 8 or more pools, a gym, large theatre, a dozen or so restaurants, a couple dozen stores, tennis courts, its own soccer field, a church, bars, and so much more.  It was quite impressive in its size. 

The guests were from all over.  You could hear all sorts of languages, French, German, Chinese, Russian, Italian, and many more.  Europeans seemed to be in the majority.  One Russian woman I spoke with said she had a twelve hour flight to get to the DR.  She and her husband just wanted to go somewhere warm because it had been such a cold winter in Europe and Russia.

            After more than a year and a half in a dirty, dusty batey, it was nice to be somewhere clean for a while.  I enjoyed hot showers, good food, and a decent bed.  I swam daily, trying to strengthen and stretch my left shoulder, which I injured about a month ago.  I also ran on the beach and in the pool, and racked up several hours on the exercise bike in the gym.  Despite all the good food I actually left the resort weighing less than when I arrived. (Not an easy feat at an all inclusive.)

            It was good to see my mother and her husband Larry.  Larry got three days of golf in and my mom joined him for one.  They also spent a lot of time just relaxing on the beach. I taught my mom how to play the card game Casino and we played each night.  It was a nice peaceful week, but I really wish that my wife Kaori could have been there with us. 

            It was hard coming back to the batey, especially since it had rained hard the night before and the whole batey was flooded and full of mud.  The kids didn’t go to school the rest of the week because of all the water everywhere.  I fixed the brakes on my bike yesterday and headed out for an hour.  I got to test the new brake pads out when a large swarm of bees crossed my path.  I noticed them just in time to come to a screeching halt right at the edge of the swarm; having only a few of them bump into me as I quickly backed up.